Preliminary Programme

This paper attempts an historical analysis of the formal primary schooling sector in Tanzania between the years 1961 and 1982. Using the theoretical framework provided by Mahmood Mamdani’s 1996 thesis ‘Citizen and Subject’ the paper attempts to ascertain the extent to which the colonial regimes utilised education as a means of ethnicising African society in order to perpetuate racial dualism. However the main focus of the paper is how the Independent state attempted to mitigate the colonial legacy of ‘tribalism’ through a radicalisation and centralisation of the formal primary sector. The Paper argues that ‘detribalisation’ did not result in a ‘centralised despotism’ as Mamdani’s thesis suggests. Instead the need of the post-colonial state to maintain legitimacy prevented policy implementation without some degree of consensus. Universal Primary Education had been at the forefront of the liberation movement and the ruling Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) had neither the will nor the capability to implement unpopular education reform. The study ends in 1982 with the advent of the first Economic Recovery Programme and the beginning of a process, which de-Africanised and de-radicalised the primary sector in Tanzania. (Show less)

Twenty five years ago African historians were engaged in documenting the objective experience of Africans living and working under a succession of of oppressive and destructive circumstances including the slave trade and slavery, colonialism, and the policing of the
anticolonial struggle. The Marxian turn was emphasised. African social history then
occupied a space that was similar to that occupied by European and American historians, but which also sought to capture African agency, but as well as seeking to distance itself from the heritage of European Anthropology.
By the 1990s it seemed that this distancing would be subsumed into the new categories of post-colonial studies, or subaltern studies. This paper
argues that this has not happenned; rather African social historiography has maintained its autonomy through its quest for the changing shapes
and powers of knowledge,particularly through interrogating how knowledge of and about Africa is created, consumed, by whom, where, and why. Social history in Africa as we enter the new millenium seeks to emphasize the indeterminate and unsettled manifestations and meanings as they are fought over in different African contests. Symptomatic of this new thrust are works such as Luise White's Speaking with Vampires [2000] and David William Cohen & E. S. Atieno Odhiambo's work , The Risks of Knowledge {in press}. (Show less)

Identity is created in the process of polarizing differentiations on the platform of the visible. For finding ones identity we need the other ? a person opposite, for comparison, distinction, similarity and contrast. The sharper the contrast the easier a definition seems to be made ? the distinction between black and white people might be the most common one.
In these terms, when thinking about ethnographic objects on display we might learn much more about ourselves and our own culture than about the culture in question. In museums today we have accepted that it is not possible to explicate other cultures and history (as well as our own) in full. There is just guessing, comparing and interpreting of the fragments we know about the other (regardless if it is just a person, a community or a nation). Moreover, objects are in itself fragments detached from their context of use and accompanying objects. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett consequently defines ethnographic objects as objects of ethnography. According to this definition, ethnographic objects tell us more about ourselves as collector, interpreter, user or visitor than about the culture the objects came from. In relation to this understanding the desire for looking at or, even better possessing outlandish objects is related to the quest for finding and defining one owns identity. By comparing and contrasting ourselves with the other we become acquainted with ourselves.

The hypothesis given above will be elucidated and strengthened by means of an ongoing research and exhibition project about the relationship between Africa and the German county Saxony. Despite the background of a long and diverse history starting with the Saxon King August the Strongest (1670-1733), followed by the poet Hermann Prince Pueckler of Muskau (1785-1871) and the Aschanti Prince Aquasie Boachie (1827-1904) the various connections between Africa and Saxony are well hidden or unnoticed in today?s memory and awareness. The exhibition will show the links, effects and influences these relations caused. Obviously - considering the incomparable scale of county to continent ? much more elements of impact will be found in Saxony. Nevertheless, the focus of dealing with that relationship will be put much more on questions of power, the motivation for a contact and consequences within the own culture. In line with this intention objects from Africa as well as objects from Saxony will be on display. The arrangement will intensify these questions by confronting historical as well as contemporary objects acquired in Africa as souvenir, present, evidence, attraction and article of value with objects made in Saxony with reference to Africa in decor, motif, pattern or material. The choice of exhibits and the form of presentation are less intended to introduce Africa but rather to picture the various constructions of Africa in the ideas, deliberations, communication and material culture in Saxony. The desire for the exotic, magical, mysterious and wonder as one of the main motifs for contact will be questioned in terms of the knowledge gained or prevented about the unfamiliar continent. The answers will provide more ideas and examples of people?s self-definition in Saxony than of descriptions and characterization of the African culture and society. (Show less)